


Play For Me

by birdybirdnerd



Category: Coco (2017)
Genre: (brief description of breaking bones, Fluff, Gen, Music, but be warned i guess), but its not super graphic so it should be fine, cocovalentinesfanworkexchange
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-03-14
Updated: 2018-03-14
Packaged: 2019-03-31 07:36:56
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,654
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13970361
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/birdybirdnerd/pseuds/birdybirdnerd
Summary: Socorro feels bad about what she did, so she tries to make it better.Done for the Coco Valentine's Day Fanwork Exchange over on tumblr! My recipient was @tundrainafrica. I hope you like it!





	Play For Me

_ Just… a little… farther… _

Miguel yelped as his footing slid, nearly making him fall from the tree branch he was perched on. He scrambled back, wrapping his arms securely around the truck of the tree, and struggled to keep from hyperventilating.  _ Ay, that was too close. I almost fell! _ As his heart slowly stopped racing, he heard his sister call from below. 

“Did you get it yet?” little Socorro Rivera shouted. “Did you get my kite?” 

Miguel gulped as he looked back up to where he’d been reaching. The colorful scrap of paper and balsa wood taunted him from where it was tangled in the branches higher up, just  _ slightly _ out of his reach. “A-Almost there, Coco!” he called back. 

As he looked around for another way to reach it, - maybe a loose branch he could knock it down with? - he spotted another branch halfway between him and the kite. It looked thin, too weak to support any other almost-seventeen-year-old, but Miguel was still as thin and reedy as he’d been in his youth.  _ It should work _ , he thought, and carefully maneuvered himself up higher. 

The branch creaked as he settled his full weight on it, but held fast, and Miguel smiled. “ _ Perfecto, _ ” he said to himself, and looked back up to the kite, which was now in his reach. Stretching out an arm, he felt his fingers brush against the soft paper. 

_ CRACK! _

The branch gave out from underneath him and he plummeted down, a scream caught in his throat. He crashed through a few branches, his arms and face getting scratched up in the process, before a particularly strong one caught him painfully in the middle, knocking all the air out of his lungs. A sharp pain shot through his ribs at the same time the branch snapped, and he fell the rest of the way to the ground. 

Something made a sick snapping sound as he landed on his side, hard, on the dusty ground. The fall had knocked him around, and his head spun as he tried to get his bearings. Someone was screaming, but the world was spinning and it sounded far away, and wait, was his arm supposed to be pointing that way? It felt funny, but nothing really felt real, so he decided to worry about it after his head stopped pounding. 

When had night fallen? It was getting dark, and his arm was starting to twinge, but when he rapidly blinked to try to clear his vision the blurriness only got worse. He was moving now, someone was shaking him, but he couldn’t see who it was and couldn’t hear what they were saying, but it was loud and high pitched and  _ oh no, Coco! _

“C-Coco…?” Miguel mumbled, blinking slowly. “Wuh… What’s wrong, Coco?” His arm was  _ really _ starting to hurt now. 

Before she could answer, his eyes slipped closed and he passed out cold. 

* * *

Four-year-old Coco slowly approached her big brother’s door, hands fiddling with the hem of her colorful dress. She raised a fist to knock, but hesitated, unsure. Apparently though, her footsteps had been loud enough.

“You can come in, Coco _ , _ ” Miguel called softly. She flinched, twisting the fabric once more before dropping it and pushing the door open. 

It had been about three, three and a half weeks, but the sight of her big brother in a cast still made Coco feel bad inside. He was her big, strong brother; he shouldn’t be  _ able _ to get hurt like this. But here he was, bedridden as his ribs and arm healed, unable to go to school or go out and play in the plaza anymore. 

And it was all Coco’s fault. After all, it was her kite he’d been trying to rescue when he fell. It would make sense if he was mad, and didn’t want to see her. 

When she entered, though, he smiled. “ _ Hola, _ Coco. How are you today?” 

He was laying in bed, pillows propped against the headboard and a book propped on his knees. He looked comfy enough, as if he were just relaxing, but the big, clunky cast ruined the image. His guitar was leaning against the wall next to the bed; in reach, but untouched. It made Coco feel even worse. 

“You can’t play anymore, can you?” she asked. “And it’s b’cause of me, right?” 

Miguel got this look on his face that Coco couldn’t read, but before she could get a better look, he smiled. “No,  _ cariño _ , it’s not your fault,” he assured, closing his book and setting it aside. “I wanted to help you. Just because I was helping you doesn’t mean it was your fault I got hurt.”

Coco looked away. “But, but if you didn’t help me, then you didn't get hurt. But you got hurt. So I hurt you. I’m really sorry.” 

Miguel sighed and shook his head. “Okay then. I accept your apology. Can you drop it now?”

Coco nodded, and he returned to his book. She stood there awkwardly, shifting from foot to foot, until she made up her mind and went over to the bed. Miguel looked up again as she brushed her fingers against the strings on his guitar. 

“What are you doing?” he asked. 

Coco frowned. “You can’t play anymore.” 

“Yes, we established that.” 

“But, but you wanna,” she insisted. “You can’t play, but you wanna.” 

Miguel sighed again, a tinge of sadness working its way into the sound. “Yes, Coco. I know. But it won’t be forever. When my arm heals completely, I can play again. I just have to wait.” 

Coco nodded, still frowning. “But you wanna play  _ now _ , but you can’t. And that makes you feel bad.” 

Shrugging, Miguel turned back to his book, turning the page with his good hand. “It does make me kinda sad, but I’m okay. Really.” 

They devolved into silence again, but Coco wasn’t finished. After a moment’s deliberation, she grabbed the neck of the guitar and pulled herself up onto the bed, next to her brother. He startled, almost dropping his book, and watched curiously as she struggled to position the big instrument in her lap. 

Reaching over it as far as she could, Coco plucked at the top string. It made a deep, reverberating sound, that she could feel vibrating through the wood pressed to her chest. She plucked it again, then reached a little farther and plucked the next string. It made a slightly higher sound. 

“What are you doing?” Miguel asked again. 

“You can’t play, and it makes you sad,” Coco explained. She plucked the first string again, then stretched her fingers as far as she could and just barely reached the one on the bottom, giggling at the high pitched sound it made. “So I’m gonna play for you, to make you feel better.” 

Miguel smiled fondly and shook his head. “You don’t even know how to play.” 

Coco strummed her fingers like she’d seen him doing before, trying to hit them all and mostly doing so. “I’m playing right now!” 

Setting his book aside, Miguel shifted until he was sitting closer, able to reach the guitar. “Here, it’s out of tune. Lemme fix that for you.” 

Instructing her to keep picking at certain strings, Miguel twisted the tuners until they sounded right to him. Coco marvelled at how the sounds changed so drastically with only marginal tightening. Soon, Miguel deemed it in tune. 

“Okay, you wanna play?” he asked. “I need you to push your finger down on this string, and play it again.”

He pointed to a place on the top string. Coco pressed down on it and plucked the string again, but it sounded dull and quiet. She frowned. “What did I do?” 

Miguel laughed. “It’s okay,  _ cariño _ , you just didn’t press hard enough. You gotta press super hard for it to work, so hard it almost hurts.” 

“But how do you play all the time if it hurts?” Coco asked. 

“It doesn’t always hurt,” Miguel explained. “After you play a long time, you get callouses on your fingers. The skin gets thick and hard, and it makes it easier to play.” He gestured to his broken left arm and added “I’d show you my callouses, but there’s a cast in the way right now.  _ Disculpe. _ ” 

Frowning again, Coco looked back down at the strings. She brushed her fingers along the top one, then pressed down again, as hard as she could. Her little finger shook with the force, but when she plucked the string again, the sound rang out clear. 

“It sounds different!” she giggled, releasing the string. 

“ _ ¡Sí!” _ Miguel then pointed to another place on the string. “Now press here and do it again.” 

Coco followed along, pressing different places on the strings as hard as she could and carefully plucking them. It was slow going, but soon she had the hang of things. It was hard for her small hands to stretch far enough to reach the strings they needed to press, but by shifting the guitar into facing up in her lap, she managed. It also made pressing the strings hurt a little less, which was good in her book. 

“I know this song!” Coco exclaimed after a few minutes of slowly picking out the tune her brother was directing. “I know it! It’s… uh…” 

“ _ Remember me~” _ Miguel sang softly, smiling at her. “Yep! It’s super simple, but it’s the same basic tune.” 

Coco grinned widely. “Can you teach me the rest of it?” 

“Sure thing.” Situating himself next to her, he continued to direct her fingers where they needed to go, and as they went on, the melody began to take shape. Soon it was recognizable as the old lullaby, and even though Coco was too young to know much about the history or emotion behind it, the sound had her heart swelling up with emotions she couldn’t name. It felt familiar. 

It felt like home. 


End file.
